snow days (insert exclamation marks here)

I woke up yesterday morning and looked through the living room window into a snow globe. Sarah, Annie, and I all had class at 9:30, so as we got ready we kind of debated whether classes might be cancelled.


Sadly, there were no emails or notices on the school website to tell us it was.


So, a little late, we trudged through the snow. It was already getting close to a foot deep. We have about a fifteen minute walk, which is fine in most weather, but on cold winter days, walking down a lonely path that runs through the centre of a huge, elevated, open field is like walking across the frozen tundra while under direct attack from the Winter Wizard. (Most of the pain is caused by the wind.) To add to the pleasure, the snow was masking the fact that the path had turned to ice during yesterday's "thaw". One of my friends made impromptu snow angels twice in a row. At least, when she fell on her back it was a snow angel. The face plant created a slightly different shape.


It was actually a really fun walk.


We made it to Lewis and Tolkien class fifteen minutes late, but it hadn't even started yet, so it was fine. I was looking forward to the usual 15-hour Tuesday at school, between meetings, four classes, and a shift at the writing centre. So imagine my delight when in Postcolonial History I discovered that everything was cancelled from noon on!


By the time we walked home, it was up to our knees on the path, maybe two feet deep.


* * *

"Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery."
Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

"Where does the white go when the snow melts?"






"A year of snow, a year of plenty."
French Proverb

"Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough."
Earl Wilson

"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending."
J.R.R. Tolkien

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Francois Villon

"You are ice and fire,

The touch of you burns my hands like snow."

Amy Lowell

"There is neither heaven nor earth, only snow, falling incessantly"

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."
John Ruskin

* * *

Another blessing came with the storm. I don't want to talk about it too much on this blog, but God gave a beautiful gift of reconciliation last night. Openness, honesty, confession, forgiveness, the Holy Spirit invited in. I really believe that it's God's will to restore communities that the enemy tries to corrupt. Some mold was cleansed from out house last night.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *

Oh, and today is another snow day.